Because One World is Never Enough

Palauan

Many of you will have the feeling of beginning to learn a new language in which you recognize almost nothing. Vocabulary you know is scant, the grammatical patterns are different and you feel that the path of least resistance is to give up.

I highly recommend you don’t give up…because learning a language highly dissimilar to your own (whether it be your own native language[s] or ones you’ve already learned as an adult) IS possible. You will need to adjust your ways of thinking ever-so-slightly.

The good news is that you can harness various skills you have used to acquire your native language (or other languages you know) to learning your new language that seems as though it belongs on another planet.

Given that my native language is English, let’s look some of my languages in terms of “how different they are” from English on a scale of 1 to 5. 1 is very similar to English, 5 is very different. Keep in mind that this is NOT the same thing as difficulty per se.

The further you get away from the West, the more likely you are to encounter languages that go up the scale. The languages in (1) are very tied to the west on multiple fronts (e.g. Atlantic Creoles, German, Scandinavian Languages and Yiddish all influencing American culture to profound degrees) the languages in (3) have all been profoundly impacted by Germanic-speaking cultures but still maintain a lot of distinctness. With that said, the English influence (add German in the case of Hungarian and Swedish in the case of Finnish) is undeniable in a language like Fijian or Hebrew (given that both were under British rule).

A friend of mine was diving into Korean and he found himself struggling to remember words. And that’s NORMAL. I had that experience with all the languages 2 and higher with the higher numbers requiring more of it.

That said, there ARE ways to remember words in languages highly different from your native tongue EVEN if it seems impossible now.

Make Connections Between Words in the Language

Instead of looking OUTSIDE the language for connections to words you already know (as would be the standard practice in Romance or Germanic Languages if you’re a native English speaker, or even Indo-European Languages further afield), look INSIDE the language.

In Hebrew I encourage my students to look out for “shorashim” (or root words). These are sets of letters that will encapsulate similar meanings when seen in a sequence. Like in Arabic, the letters will dance around various prefixes, suffixes and vowel combinations that will change the meaning ever-so-slightly.

A more concrete example is with Fijian. The prefix “vaka-“ indicates “possessing the characteristics of, possessing …”. As such, you can collect additional words by looking at words with this prefix and then learning the form of the word without “vaka-“ in the front. Let’s have a look:

Wati – husband, wife, spouse

Vakawati – married (vaka + wati -> possessing a spouse)

To find words that are similar in this respect, one method you could use is to have an Anki Deck of an extensive vocabulary (what is “extensive” would depend on your short- and long-term goals with the language). Look up a root in the deck and you’ll see all words that have it:

The folks at Transparent Language have said that, minus memory techniques, you would need to see a word anywhere between five to sixteen times in order to remember it permanently. A huge advantage is that you can get exposed to one root and its derivatives very quickly in this regard.

Even with a language like English, you can do the same with a verb like “to take” which is idiomatically rich when combined with prefixes (to overtake), suffixes (to take over) or direct objects (to take a break).

Out of all of the languages I have learned, the same principle holds and can be taken advantage of.

Do the Words and Expressions You Want to Learn Tell Any Stories?

Let’s take the Lao phrase ຂໍ ໂທດ (khɔ̌ɔ thòot). It would mean “I’m sorry” but it literally means “request punishment”.

Various languages don’t have a very “to have”, instead they would say something like “there is upon me” (Finnish) “there is by me” (Russian), “there is to me” (Hebrew, although Hungarian also does something similar sometimes) or “there is my X” (where X is a noun – Fijian, Kiribati / Gilbertese and Hungarian do this)

Arcane sentence structure can actually be an ADVANTAGE in some respects. Greenlandic’s mega-long words can be a great conversation starter AND something for you to remember.

Words, phrases and idioms tell stories in your native language too, but chances are you probably won’t be aware of them and if you do eventually, it may be after a decade or two of speaking it, if not more.

Associate Various Words with Entertainment or Things that Have Happened in Your Life

Scene: a synagogue event.

I got “Colloquial Hungarian” earlier that day. I met a Hungarian girl and the only thing I know is a basic greeting. I ask how to say “pleased to meet you” and she says “örülök hogy megismertelek”. You can imagine how much I struggled with this simple sentence on day one, much to her laughter and those looking on.

The fact is, I never forgot the phrase since. Because I associated it with that incident.

You can also do the same with individual words and phrases that you may have heard through songs, song titles, particularly emphatic scenes in movies, books or anything else you consume for entertainment in your target language.

The over-dramatic style of anime actually helped me learn a significant amount of Finnish phrases as a result of “attaching” them to various mental pictures. Lao cinema also did something similar. Pay attention ever-so-slightly to the texture of the voice and any other details—these will serve as “memory anchors”. It’s a bit like saving a GIF to your brain, almost.

Hidden Loan Words from Colonial Languages.

The Fijian word for a sketch / painting is “droini”. Do you see the English cognate?

It’s the word “drawing” –Fijianized.

Do be aware, though: some English loan words can mutate beyond their English equivalents in terms of meaning. Japanese is probably infamous for this (in which a lot of English loan words developed lives and meanings of their own, much like Hebrew loan words in Yiddish sometimes found themselves detached from their original meanings in Hebrew).

Another example: Sanskrit and Pali words in languages of Southeast Asia in which Theravada Buddhism is practiced. Back to Lao. The word ປະເທດ (pa-thèet) may be foreign to you as the word “country”, but you’ve probably heard the word “Pradesh” before in various areas of India, even if you know nothing about India too deeply (yes, it is the same word modified for Lao pronunciation). The second syllable in particular may be familiar to you as the “-desh” from “Bangladesh”.

Which brings me into another point…

Do You Recognize any Words through Proper Nouns?

Tuvalu is a country in the South Pacific. It means “there are eight”. The Fijian word for to stand permanently or to be built is “tu” and the word for eight is “walu”. Fijian and Tuvaluan are not the same language but they are family members. You can recognize various other words by determining what place names mean or even names of people you know (whether well-known historical characters or your personal friends).

Another example: Vanuatu. Vanua in Fijian is a country or a place. Tu is the SAME root that we have in “Tuvalu” (yes, the “tu” in “Tuvalu” and “Vanuatu” mean THE EXACT SAME THING!) Vanuatu roughly means “here is our country” (or “country here”)

Again, this is something you can do for many languages. I remember doing in in Germany as well.

Lastly…

Embrace the Differences in the Grammar

I was amused by the fact that the Tuvaluan word for “to understand” is “malamalama”. I posted it in a small polyglot group. A friend of mine who studies mostly languages from Western Europe and the Middle East asked me to conjugate it.

Surprisingly this system (not entirely foreign to me because of having studied other languages in that family) was not foreign to me. But I learned to like it. A lot.

Feel free to tell interested friends about what makes your different language very different in terms of grammar. Some may even be intrigued about the fact that many languages don’t have an equivalent of “to have”.

There are some things that are a bit difficult to embrace, such as Greenland’s verb conjugation that has transitive forms for each pair (in normal English, this would me an I X you form, an I X him / her / it form, an I X all of you form, an I X them form, a you X me form, a you X him / her / it form … FOR EVERY PAIR).

Granted, I’ve been in writing retirement for a while (because I’m focusing more on my video game right now which is my life’s first priority at the moment), but in honor of Greenland’s National Day, I’ll be keeping with tradition and letting you know exactly where to turn if you want to begin your journey into the fascinating language of Greenlander Country (Kalaallit Nunaat – which literally means “to the Greenlanders their Land).

Some of you may know that I am the proud uploader of the first Greenlandic course in the history of Memrise.com. My courses are still there and encompass two very important elements:

Basic phrases that are useful in tourist situations (which is ALWAYS a helpful starting point) and

Suffixes (complete with examples). Suffixes are ESSENTIAL in Greenlandic because twenty-letter words are the norm. There are suffixes for verbs and suffixes for nouns and also suffixes that transform one part of speech into another. Like some other languages outside the Indo-European sphere, the boundaries between parts of speech are significantly blurry in Greenlandic.

In some extreme examples, you end up with words like “Nalunaarasuartaatilioqateeraliorfinnialikkersaatiginialikkersaatilillaranatagoorunarsuarooq” (Once again, they tried to build a giant radio station, but apparently it was only on the drawing board). Dissect this word in a comment and you’ll win a prize!

I get messages on a weekly basis on how to learn Greenlandic, and the Memrise courses in both English and Danish are a good start. (NOTE: they are accessible from the Desktop version despite the fact that the app version only offers the choices of the official courses. Memrise, you really need to fix that…)

One book that I’ve found extremely useful is the German-Language “Grönländisch – Wort für Wort” which explains the grammar very clearly and also provides a lot of useful phrases for all tourist situations. That said, I somehow feel as though the book itself isn’t going to fully equip you to speed-read the Greenlandic Language Edition of “Sermitsiaq” (a local newspaper).

Yes, it is Danish-Greenlandic and if you don’t know Danish you’ll probably get repetitive strain injury via copy-pasting everything into Google Translate. The dictionary includes both example words and phrases that fully illustrate how you use something.

Let’s show you an example from the book:

elske vb. (-de, -t)

~r ham, ~r hende asavaa (fx de ~r hinanden asaqatigiipput)

~r ham højt, ~r hende højt asaaraa

han ~r at rejse angalajumatuvoq

jeg ~r kaffe (ɔ: synes det smager herligt) kaffi mamaraara

I’ll translate this for you:

To love

Loves him / her – asavaa (e.g. they love each other asaqatigiipput)

Loves him / her dearly – asaaraa

He loves to travel – angalajumatuvoq

I love coffee (i.e. thinks that it tastes great) kaffi mamaraara

One thing to understand about Greenlandic is the fact that its verb forms are difficult. There are intransitive forms (ones that you use when there is no direct object) and transitive forms (ones that you use when there is one). Granted, languages like Fijian and Hungarian also have similar systems as well, but in Greenlandic each pair of subject -> object determiners is different.

At 4:19 in this video you can see the full conjugation of intransitive verbs:

nerivunga – I eat

nerivutit – you (sing.) eat

qitippunga – I dance

qitipputit – you (sing.) dance

Etc.

Later on in the video comes the “atuar-“ root which means “to read” (a word that didn’t exist in Greenlandic prior to foreign contact).

There is one issue with a lot of learner-ese in Greenlandic, the fact that making a jump to native level material can be VERY DIFFICULT (especially if it is very poetic material like Nanook’s song lyrics).

One thing that would be helpful is to listen to the BEGINNING of words and recognize the roots of each word first of all. In Greenlandic and other polysynthetic languages, all words have a “base” on which other words are made.

Illoqarfimmut -> to the city.

Illu is the base. And it means “house”. Qar -> to have. fik -> place where there are. mut -> towards.

“Towards the place where yon be houses.”

The language works with mathematical precision precisely for this reason. Greenlandic isn’t necessarily difficult on paper it is just very hard to get used to. But that in of itself has earned it the coveted title of “hardest language I ever attempted”. (Palauan is second place).

Glosbe.com is also very useful by virtue of the fact that its cross translations will ease you into reading Greenlandic even if the words seem very intimidating.

What’s more, you can also begin writing your own sentences, however simple, to gain an active understanding of the language.

Lastly there is a lot of bilingual Danish / Greenlandic material present on websites such as KNR are Sermitsiaq.

You’re probably wondering if it is possible to learn Greenlandic without Danish at all. Perhaps, but do keep in mind that a small amount of loan words as well as all numbers higher than 12 are taken straight from Danish, not also to mention that it would also be useful for your Greenland journey as well (as things stand).

Lastly I’m here to help in any way I can. I may not know the language too well, and it isn’t my best one . When I was there I usually managed basic tourist functions with ease but nothing very deep. That said I can provide help or even provide more resources if necessary.

If I have my way, Greenland-o-mania may be taking over the world before we know it!

Someone who, when I am done meeting with him or her, makes me feel elevated and ready to enter my life with renewed motivation.

Someone who acknowledges the progress I have made in addition to that I have yet to make.

Someone who isn’t over jealous or guarded of me.

How learn any language from scratch in my own?

The first thing to ask yourself is how much you can PRONOUNCE, how much you can READ (and understand what you’re reading), and how much you can UNDERSTAND. Depending on which combination of the three you have, your approach will have to be different. However, the more prior knowledge you have in a related language, the easier it is to get “lazy”.

Generally, I would start with “hello, how are you? What is your name? My name is… Where are you from? I am from…” and then go onto “I have, you have…” “Do you have…?” and then the same with “to want”, “to go”.

I’ve spoken about this in the interview I did with Luke Truman of Full Time Fluency a few months back:

This should help.

What was the catalyst for your interest in languages of the Pacific in general and Palauan in particular?

Climate change in the case of Oceania in general, a childhood fascination with that area of the world, and, in the case of Palau, the sound of the language as well as how it looked on paper. Oh, and the flag. Who could forget the flag? As a kid I could look at it for hours. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating.

How much Japanese do you understand with your Palauan knowledge?

Same as how much Latin you would understand from English.

Apart from Yiddish and Hebrew what other Jewish languages have you studied?

A tiny bit of Ladino in college and a handful of words from Jewish Languages of Azerbaijan in the early 2010’s, but aside from that, pretty much nothing seriously.

Have you ever looked into Krymchak or the Udmurt-influenced dialect of Yiddish?

Now I may have to!

When studying Breton, do you prefer the artificial French-influenced “standard” or one of the dialects?

The KLT (Kerne-Leon-Treger ) variety used in the Colloquial Breton book and in the Kauderwelsch book is my go-to. It seems fairly consistent with what is used on Wikipedia although there are some songs that have “curveball” elements for those overly accustomed to KLT.

Apart from Northern Sami, Finnish, and Hungarian, do you plan on learning any other Uralic languages?

I never say I won’t plan on it. Right now I do feel “overloaded”, however.

When you were in Israel, did you encounter any Circassians or Hungarian Jews? If yes, did they speak their ethnic languages?

Possibly and yes respectively. My Hungarian was limited to a few words in 2009 but my efforts were appreciated. What’s more, do keep in mind that I had heavy limiting beliefs about language learning back in those times. Odd, because my experience in the Ulpan should have actively proved those beliefs wrong.

How often do you encounter peoples of the Pacific in real life apart from the times you actually go there?

Hawaiians about once every three months or so, same with people who have been expatriates in places like Fiji and Samoa. Aside from Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, I haven’t met anyone in person from Oceania yet. That will change this year, I hope.

Will your RPG “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures” be playable in Greenlandic?\

I’m going on record: YES.

Have you ever written poetry in the languages you learn?

I believe I did once or twice in Yiddish at the National Yiddish Book Center. I also have done improvisational singing in Tok Pisin. I may have also written a piece or two in Hebrew while at Wesleyan University but I have no recollection of it. I did write an absurdist play about talking jellyfish in that same Hebrew class that makes most internet memes look tame by comparison.

How do you deal with the blurry boundary between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation?

Cultural appropriation is, in my view, taking one element of a culture (let’s say, clothing) and claiming it as your own without having a basic understanding of where, why and how that culture or cultural element exists.

If I were to wear a national costume in public with holy significance, that would possibly be breaching a boundary in that culture that I may be unaware of. But obviously me wearing a shirt with a Greenlandic flag on it despite not being Greenlandic or Inuit (or any Native American at all) does not make me a cultural appropriator. It is a mark of solidarity and appreciation.

On this note, I would like to say for the first time that I am fully aware of the fact that there are people who are prepared to call “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures” cultural appropriation despite the deep involvement of actual Greenlanders at every stage of its production. I look at the Greenlandic story as a whole in a way that contemporary American pop culture and its sad legacy of cartoonish national caricatures will probably never do otherwise.

If you would prefer Greenlandic culture would remain a virtually unknown mystery in much of the rest of the world instead of appreciated for the wonderful slice of the human story that it is, then I have nothing to say to you.

What was, to you, the most easily graspable non-Latin orthographic system in any non-L1 language you’ve studied? What was the least?

From Easiest to Hardest:

Greek

Cyrillic

Hebrew

Canadian Aboriginal Syllabary

Arabic

Lao

Burmese

Have you ever SAVED SOMEONES LIFE with language?

The answer is: yes. And surprisingly, my own. Several times.

For one, my decision to become a tutor of several languages actually ended up saving my life. Shortly after graduating from JTS, I fell ill for a while. My own parents, who hold medical degrees, misdiagnosed me several times.

What ended up saving my life was one of my students of Swedish, who casually recommended based on my symptoms that I had Lyme Disease. Thanks to his suggestion, the disease was caught in time and my life was saved.

There is also the story about how Greenlandic saved my life, but I will relate that in future interviews when “Kaverini: Nuuk Adventures” is released. There is a specific reason I chose Greenland as the setting for my first video game (well, one of several specific reasons) and one of them in particular may come as a shocker to many of you.

Speaking of which, I’m going to continue doing character sketches for Nuuk Adventures right now!

While I’ve been doing some light studying of Fiji Hindi on and off since October 2017 on my YouTube channel, I only began studying Fiji Hindi in earnest about a week and a half ago, having made it my primary project for April 2018 given that I’ve become ever more comfortable with Fijian.

Yes, I’ve been getting significant pressure to focus more on Standard Hindi (mostly from people who know very little if not in fact nothing about Fiji), but Fiji Hindi it is, because it is the “language of the heart” concerning pretty much all Indo-Fijians. Standard Hindi may be useful but my first priority is ensuring that I can manage Fiji Hindi well enough (because pretty much nowhere else online have I encountered anyone doing what I’m doing with Fiji Hindi right now).

I’ve made four recordings in Fiji Hindi thus far for the 30-Day Speaking Challenge and already I’ve noticed a drastic improvement in me being able to put sentences together. That said, I still speak in a very simple manner and come NOWHERE CLOSE to being able to ask for directions / order things in restaurants using only Fiji Hindi.

The process of making those recordings, on the other hand, has been difficult for a number of reasons:

While Fiji Hindi is, from the perspective of linguistic concepts, not too difficult (Palauan and Greenlandic required a lot of mind-bending), from the perspective of resources it has been the most difficult language I’ve encountered.

At least with Fijian I had phrasebooks. With Palauan I had a good website (tekinged.com). With Kiribati / Gilbertese I had a good textbook as well as several thorough online dictionaries.

For Fiji Hindi, I’ve haven’t had as many materials that have significantly eased the process for me. There is the Glosbe Sentence dictionary, as well as the Live Lingua Project (look under Fijian for the Fiji Hindi Course!), not also to mention a series of good grammar books (available on Google) and an excellent Memrise Course.

For dictionaries, I use Glosbe’s sentence translations, the CTRL-F function on various books, and this dictionary which tends to be very clearly hit-or-miss (http://www.oocities.org/fijihindi/FijiHindiEnglishDict.htm). For verb conjugations there’s Wikiversity (from which I compiled this video walking you through the conjugations):

That said, a lot of these materials have been inconsistent in multiple ways (e.g. writing systems, the grammar book even uses the Devanagari script which even the Wikipedia [intended for native speakers] doesn’t use, the Peace Corps book uses upside-down e’s and the Memrise course doesn’t [and neither does the Wikipedia or the small bit of the Lonely Planet South Pacific Phrasebook devoted to Fiji Hindi]).

In a sense, this language has been very hard because even sculpting a SIMPLE SENTENCE can take multiple cross-references of all of these materials as well as using Google Search’s function to find out how legitimate (or not) a simple phrase is (to do this, use quotation marks to ensure that the EXACT combination of words you’re looking for exists somewhere. This can [and usually does] work even for languages with small internet presences!)

There’s also Fiji Indian TV (at http://www.fijiindiantv.com/ , with a lot of their videos hosted on YouTube) and the amount of English loan words used is staggering (and a friend of mine, Kevin Fei Sun of Bahasantara [https://medium.com/bahasantara] gave me fair warnings about how commonly they’re used even in Standard Hindi). I’ve been using this to ensure that my accent is…well…better…in some respect…because both in person and on YouTube I’ve had people telling me that I “sound like a white person” when I speak Fiji Hindi.

Maybe all I need is more effort and speaking practice invested in Fiji Hindi and the problem will “go away”. But if you’ve ever had this issue with Indo-Aryan Languages (regardless of what race you are), then do let me know! I’m always ready to hear inspiring stories!

After a week or two of recordings, I’ll set in place goals to ensure that I don’t have “gaps” in my Fiji Hindi vocabulary, much like I did with Fijian in February and March.

By the way, the March 2018 30-Days-of-Fijian recording WILL be up by next week!

I’ll be posting something about my underaccomplishment with the 30-Day Challenge in Greenlandic in the coming days, but I thought it would be very humorous for me to try something else for a change.
By the way, my Fijian is getting FANTASTICALLY better with each coming day (I still have some blind spots that will be weeded out in the coming weeks, not also to mention the fact that I’ve been focusing mostly on speaking rather than listening or reading right now, given that I’ll be doing most of THAT when I’m in Fiji. Listening, reading and writing will no doubt follow, and I’m not even sure if writing exercises for Fijian would be effort ideally paid off because the only people I know who have lived in Fiji have been expats that only know a few words / sentences of Fijian.)

First off, let’s start by listing the variety of things I do NOT consider. And you can probably already guess what the first one is:

(1) Number of native speakers. Doesn’t mean anything, isn’t necessary in building an emotional connection to the culture. All languages have their worth and it shouldn’t be measured depending on how many people on this planet speak it. Sure, it might be easier for you to find people to practice with, but in the age of the Internet, does finding people to practice with, even in person, really matter?

(2) Lists of Articles on Publications Like Business Insider Telling Me That It’s a Good Idea. I don’t outsource my decisions to giant publications and I don’t think you should, either.

(3) Any charts that point to a language or a series of languages being “the most lucrative” or “the best to learn”. Especially in the United States where most people don’t learn ANY language (interestingly among Jews this really isn’t the case given how many of us have some passive knowledge of Hebrew at the VERY least), ANY language is a boon and it doesn’t matter if it’s Spanish or Palauan. Come to think of it, given that 60% of high school students study Spanish, maybe just MAYBE Palauan and Spanish might be fairly equally waited. Again, do which one you like the most.

(4) What other languages people are learning. The world doesn’t need more followers. Nu uh. The world follows the lead of the leaders. And leaders do what is different and unexpected. (Again, don’t take this as discouragement from wanting to study a language like French, just don’t consider the crowd as the sole deciding factor or even ONE of the deciding factors.)

So here’s what I consider:

(1) Am I Healing the World by Choosing to Engage In This Culture? One thing that I’ve used to decide several of my languages in the past year (such as Gilbertese or Lao) is the fact that I realize that I can use my language to bring about healing.

With Kiribati, looming climate change and rising sea levels is something that defines the cutlure at the moment, and by choosing to learn Gilbertese I have committed to keeping their culture alive AND letting other people know about the realities of these threatened areas.

With Lao, I got to glimpse a country (that I haven’t visited yet) with extreme poverty that also has the distinction of being the most bombed country in all of human history. (More bombs were dropped on Laos by Nixon and Kissinger than all of the bombs by all sides in WWII everywhere COMBINED).

With a language like German, Polish or Hungarian, all associated by some more close-minded Jews as “languages of people who have anti-Semitism in their blood” (saying that hatred is embedded in someone’s culture is extremely offensive, in my opinion), I actually realized how many Jews (past, present and future) strongly identified with these cultures, and how much they’ve influenced the Judaism I’ve known for my whole life.

Thankfully German-Jewish relations have drastically improved during my lifetime, and I’m doing work to help Jewish relations in both directions with the other two (and many others!)

(2) Do I Have Music or Other Media that I Deeply Like in This Language? I fell in love with Greenlandic music and it became a motivating factor in wanting to studying it more. With music in other languages like Tok Pisin and Burmese, I found a lot of songs that I really liked and it caused me to have not only motivation to learn the language but also positive feelings when learning it.

Some languages, like Tajik and Lao, I haven’t found REALLY good music that I like. Yet. But with Icelandic I also remember having that struggle for months, and eventually I found Icelandic music that I really, REALLY liked. Or, if you know anything about this, you could give me recommendations, maybe!

(3) Will Engaging with This Language Make Me More Knowledgeable about a Culture I Don’t Know a Lot About?

Some languages, like Finnish or Palauan, I learned as exploratory journeys into “places” that I didn’t know very much about at all. I’ve never regretted learning a language for this reason.

(4) Is this language spoken in my immediate neighborhood? Hence the reason I learned Jamaican Patois ‘n friends. In Crown Heights it genuinely feels like a pan-Caribbean neighborhood, and especially given our zeitgeist of cultures distrusting each other, I felt as though “being a good citizen” involved me learning Patois. So glad I did!

(5) Did my ancestors speak this language? Hungarian and Swedish were both on the agenda precisely because I had great-grandparents who spoke both as their mother tongue (on opposite sides of my family)

(6) Do I need it for business, travel or romance? I think this is fairly clear. Sometimes (like my travels to Italy in 2014 and in Jordan in 2015) I felt as though I was half-hearted in my attempts to learn the local language and my trip felt genuinely lacking in comparison to when I did know more of it (such as, most notably, my recent trips to Greenland and Iceland). This is the reason I’m learning Fijian right now (and Fiji Hindi is also on the agenda in a month or two, and preparations for it were underway for a while).

(7) Have I dreamed of finding out what this country or culture was like since childhood?

Some places, like Greenland, Laos, Burkina Faso or Ireland, are places that I’ve wondered about since early childhood sometimes for silly, sentimental reasons. Somehow within my unconscious I feel as though places like these would be “good fits” for me. And I’m almost always right.

Between these seven reasons, a combination of all of them dictates which languages I choose to have in my life and which ones I devote time to. Feel free to share some of YOUR motivating factors below!

I’ve noticed that whenever the seasons are on the verge of changing I seem to think about what sort of languages I am enjoying (or not) and I make changes accordingly.

Some languages like Dutch and Northern Sami I used to have impressive command of but now they seem to have dwindled to nothing. Others I really enjoyed learning but it occurred to me that, for whatever reason (some of which couldn’t be articulated), I didn’t really feel as though I “had the spark anymore”. Faroese, Estonian and Russian were all obsessions of mine that fell by the wayside as a result (although I still speak a bit of all languages in this paragraph and, if the need arises, I could revive them).

So I’ve decided to clear my list of all of the following. The most noteworthy clearances are Breton and French just…don’t do it for me anymore. And French I mostly learned for peer-pressure reasons anyhow. It would be one thing if I were actively planning to go to the Ivory Coast or French Polynesia instead of Fiji in the summer (and if I were even headed to Vanuatu I would make it a priority). But right now, I’m just not feeling it. Same with Breton, and I’m glad for the times we’ve had together, but for some odd reason I feel as though I need a break. (Cornish I’m still undecided about, given that St. Piran’s Day is coming up on March 5. Cornish is probably the one language that I’ve been on-again off-again the most).

I also really need to start focusing on quality, especially as I continue to enter the global spotlight with both my polyglotism AND my video games being released later this year. I’m already getting more messages than I can humanly deal with… a day that I DREAMED of seeing as a high school student.

Anyhow, on my languages page I reduced it to 31, and all of my fluent languages (B2 or higher) got to stay except for Breton which I hadn’t been practicing too much as of late anyhow. Also while Spanish and German get to stay, they are, along with English, the ones that I have the least amount of emotional attachment to (sorry).

Anyhow, let’s go through my list from A0 (a few words) to B1 (intermediate plateau) and I’ll go through the reasons I decided to keep those ones in particular.

A0

First off, Guarani is my opportunity to glimpse an indigenous culture of South America (Paraguay) that may be under siege. I devoted a lot of time on my YouTube Channel last year and I actually met a fluent speaker in Fall 2017 who absolutely refused to use it with me for some reason (I’m not going to lie, I felt snubbed and borderline offended. In an age of mass language death, you should be sharing with anyone willing to partake of your culture.)

Despite that, I shouldn’t let one bad interaction with a speaker get me down and I’m gonna be up again because it occurs to me that I need to know more about indigenous South American than I already do (it’s probably the one continent that I know the least about, actually, even if you include Antarctica).

Given that I’m headed to Fiji later on this year, Fiji Hindi is also a priority despite the fact that I’ve struggled with this one more than any other Indo-European language that isn’t Celtic. Resources are scarce and ways to rehearse it are difficult, but I’ll attempt an “attack plan” once I feel as though I’m a solid B2 in Fijian, which may be sooner than I think (a “Why Fijian is Easy” post is coming soon!)

Given the relations between the native Fijians / iTaukei and the Fiji Indians have been difficult at times, it behooves me to learn about them both, especially given that I’ll get to see close up hand. I’ve heard that Fiji Indians are prominent in the tourist industry and my chances to interact with them will be many.

Next up on the A0 list is Uyghur. I’ve gotten so much fantastic feedback from attempting this language on YouTube, not also to mention the deep pride that many Uyghurs have for their culture, that I’m going to continue it. It would be, in a sense, one of my first Chinese Languages (and I still haven’t forgotten about Mandarin quite yet but I’ll reveal everything in good time. With both my one surviving grandparent coming from a Hungarian family and my Oceania venture, I feel time-crunched from multiple sides. It seems that Uyghur is not going to be too much of a serious investment in the near future, but I’ll see what I can do with it and I have no plans to drop it completely).

Last among the A0 list is Tuvaluan. While Tongan has been dropped for the time being (too close to Fijian for me to actively work on both at the same time, as is Tuvaluan), Tuvaluan is something I want to at least be able to use in SOME capacity before heading to Fiji (if I even end up going there at all) by virtue of the fact that Fiji’s only endangered language is Tuvaluan (y’know, the expatriate community). Also given that Tuvalu is in a similar situation to Kiribati with the whole climate change thing, it’s something I believe is a moral duty. If only there were readily available good textbooks for it, otherwise I’ll have to write my own from dictionaries, grammar books and Bible translations, not also to mention help from the Tuvaluan sub-Reddit (I believe the Kiribati sub-Reddit is by invitation only. I applied to join. No answer. Hey, mods at Kiribati, can you approve me? Kam raba! [Thank you guys!])

A1

Probably the language for which I have been lauded by native speakers the most, Palauan gets to stay and will be a constant feature of my programming. You guys have fantastic music and have given me very concrete and useful advice and not a DROP of discouragement! Also that Palau Pledge and that movie with the giant is probably the most beautiful thing I’ve read / seen all year!

Probably not at A1 anymore because of months of not practicing, but I’ll have African languages in part represented by Mossi (Krio’s still on my list, don’t worry). My first tonal language from outside Asia, I think I really need to learn more about Burkina Faso, given how Christian and Muslim traditions (not also to mention elements of traditional African religions) really blend together. There’s a lot on my plate right now so no actively working on Mossi now, but at least you get to stay on my radar as opposed to the many languages that I decided to drop.

Probably my favorite Caribbean Creole is that of St. Vincent and the Grenadines. I discovered Vincentian Creole through Bible recordings and one of these days I’ll make sure to spend more time with you. You’re probably the one Caribbean nation most Americans know the least about. Can’t wait to start spending more time together!

Lastly among the A1 category (I dropped Arabic but I’ll probably be putting it back later this year when my Fijian and Fiji Hindi is secure), Tajik. Everything about you is fascinating and also very distinct from the Western Culture I experience every day in the United States. You and Uyghur will be my Central Asian projects for the not-too-distant future.

A2

Burmese music is something I have in huge doses and that I’m fascinated with. Also the Burmese-American community here in New York City, not also to mention plenty of professional opportunities with politics and translation work should I choose to get good enough. Alongside Tok Pisin, Burmese really gave me a glimpse into a country that was severely wrecked by imperialist meddling (you could pretty much say this for…well, almost everywhere on the planet, which is why I believe learning languages from these areas of the globe is a morally correct decision for all of us who want to learn some).

Irish is a language of my ancestors and one I’ve dreamed of learning well for a decade. I used to be better but I slumped terribly in progress leading up to the Polyglot Conference in 2017. I still don’t consider myself that good despite the fact that I remember having some manageable conversations in it. Probably my most poorly managed language learning project.

Gilbertese of course gets to stay. As does Fijian.

B1

Greenlandic is the language I’ve struggled with the most and STILL the hardest I’ve attempted. But given that I’m working on a video game set there I’m going to continue this fantastic relationship I’ve had with my favorite language (even though it is now tied with Gilbertese for my favorite).

Despite the fact that I SERIOUSLY need good music that I like in it, Lao is staying around too. I’ve seen heartbreaking homemade films in Lao that I will never forget for as long as I live, and this is the first language I’ve learned from a genuinely communist state. A truly meaningful experience…besides, I really like the sound of the language despite the fact that the tones still “get me”.

Lastly, Hungarian and Polish get to stay around. Hungarian is an ancestral language of mine and my deepest regret in my polyglot life is having not chosen to study it earlier. But luckily I still have time…as long as I focus. Among European Languages, Hungarian has THE most supportive native speakers (although I’ve met one or two who gave me a hard time on the surface but then gave me vaguely reluctant support…sort of?) Polish is the second-most commonly used language on my Facebook feed. Being able to speed-reed it is something I should really learn sooner than later.

So my current list reads like this:

A0 – Guarani, Fiji Hindi, Uyghur, Tuvaluan,

A1: Palauan, Mossi, Vincentian Creole, Tajik

A2 – Burmese, Irish, Gilbertese, Fijian

B1 – Greenlandic, Lao, Hungarian, Polish

B2 – Hebrew, Finnish, Krio, Jamaican Patois, Icelandic

C1 – Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Yiddish, Spanish (EU), German, Trini

C2 – Bislama, Solomon Islands Pijin, Tok Pisin

Native: English, Ancient Hebrew

I haven’t been having the best month and so I may have under-practiced some of these but I think a good dosage of focused Saturdays should get me in shape, especially with my priorities straightened out.

February is almost on its way out, and with it my Greenlandic 30-Day challenge (cut to 28 days, or so it seems) in addition to Fijian. Next month is more Fijian and another language on this page that I haven’t decided yet!